


Message in the Garden

by Stormwind13



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Dubious Consent, F/M, Magical Creatures, sorta - Freeform, underage?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-19 01:25:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2369309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stormwind13/pseuds/Stormwind13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU featuring the characters as mythological creatures. Tags will be added as the chapters progress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Consumed by Love

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own anything whatsoever in ASOIAF series and am making no money off of this story.

 

 

 

She had never seen anyone like him, her wolf lord.

They had met when she was little more than a child, a maid newly flowered, and he barely older than that. It had been a full moon and she had slipped away from her pod to dance on the shore, the waves providing the rhythm and the night birds the music. She had never asked him what he had been doing on the shore under the light of the moon that night, but she could guess.

He had watched her dance, sitting next to her seal skin for hours before she had even noticed him. She had drawn away then, terror making her less bold than she normally would have been, for what was a selkie without her skin? But he had given her a small smile and held her skin out to her. She had taken it and fled for the water but had returned the next night.

He wasn’t there and she remembered feeling disappointed that the strange boy who hadn’t stolen her was gone. Except…

There was a flower, tiny and white, sitting on the rock where the boy had been. She had touched it, turning it over in her hands – there were no flowers like this by the sea where they lived.

There was another the day after that, this one a rich deep yellow. She took this one as well and then returned the next day, thoroughly curious now and more than a little flattered.  
After all, the boy didn’t stay and seemed to be leaving flowers for no other reason than he wanted to give her small gifts. And she was young, so very young.

She wanted to dance again though and she snuck away to the shore under the dim glow of the waning crescent, neatly folding her skin and making sure that this time it was well hidden. She would not make the mistake of assuming that the beach was well hidden.

So she danced. And she knew the instant that he stepped onto the beach but she didn’t react, only continued to dance. The boy sat on the rock again and just watched her, his eyes glowing in the moonlight.

She had come back the next night.

And the next.

Until even her mother had noticed that she was spending far too much time away from the clan.

She told them about the wolf boy (for that was what he was. He had come to her in wolf skin once and she had trembled in terror until he had dropped a beautiful blue rose at her feet. And she had laughed.) For a human lord would be one thing – but a wolf lord? What a match that would be!

She left a shell; a tiny thing with a deep rose colored center that faded to a pearly glow on the edge. It wasn’t a flower, or even a weapon like the men in her clan favored for courtship, but she wasn’t sure that he would even want to.

But he was there the next night, awkward in his steel and leathers. He had to return to his own lands, further from the sea. He had asked her to wait for him, if she would like a match between their houses.

She had almost said no, but his necklace caught her eye; he had taken the shell she had left him and woven it into leather cords and hung it like a lady’s favor. She said yes and he left her with a flower.

Her aunts warned her.

Her father forbade her.

Her mother blessed her.

And when he had ridden back to the shore, she had climbed onto the back of his horse and left the sea behind her.


	2. Extinguished Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna's story

The tower was comfortable enough, she supposed, as she walked the circumference of it, fingers trailing on the outer windows that were several dozen feet in the air and too narrow to squeeze through. But a prison was still a prison, no matter how comfortable it appeared – if there were no doors, then where was the comfort?

 _Isn’t that what you considered home?_ She didn’t particularly like to think she was wrong, but she knew that what she had considered a prison was nothing compared to the real thing. _And wouldn’t I give anything to still be unable to realize that?_

She gazed out, taking in the sea and the haze that seemed to always be covering the island, turning the horizon into a murky dream, taunting her with the false promise of freedom. She had dreamed in the first days after the anger at being deceived had worn away and before she had known how well she was guarded of running, of stealing a boat and making it to The Whispers or Rook’s Rest.

But the chains that bound her were silk covered steel; small asides about her brothers, her cousins and friends. Threats to the ships that carried precious food and medicine North. And later, after she’d been bedded (but not wedded, not that first time and now not ever) who would want her, ruined that she was?

She dropped her hand to her stomach, feeling the small bump that none of the guards had yet noticed and wouldn’t for some time yet, if she was lucky.

She had hoped, when she was younger, for a partner, for sons and daughters to share in her gift and call the sea and rivers their home. But that hope was gone along with her skin, for what good was a selkie that could not answer the call of the sea that she could feel in bones? That hope was gone now, leaving only the certainty that she would survive, if not live, long enough to see her children safe.


	3. Absence

She was gone.

And the castle seemed to know it, the halls and grounds seeming… emptier, now that the Lady of Winterfell was absent. Her presence had been a constant since their mother had returned to the sea to be with her kin and had wrapped itself around their father’s own ties to the castle.

But that was gone and the castle appeared older now, the stone and wood more frail. Even the godswood seemed paler and he had never thought that the ancient forest had even noticed the presence of the people that lived in the shelter of its magic.

They didn’t even know if she was dead, only that she was no longer in the North where the lords’ magic would be able to find and protect her. He clenched his fist as he stared south over the plains, not taking in any of the sight in front of him.

If he had been a better listener, helped her more with the duties that had fallen to her as their father began to decline, would she still be here? Or had this been inevitable, the sea finally singing in her bones so strongly she couldn’t resist any longer?

But none of that changed the fact that she was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> So, what do you guys think? Criticism is appreciated.


End file.
